Separated by Law
Beiser, Vince
By Vince Beiser Illustration by Stephanie Dalton Cowan Separated by Law How the Immigration Service Is Breaking Up Families The pounding of a fist on her front door jolted Evangelina Escamilla...
...The Swift raids left so many families destitute after their breadwinners were jailed or deported that the company itself donated $300,000 to charities helping them out...
...Between that and criticism from unions and progressives over the measure's proposed guest-worker program and other provisions, the entire bill wound up scuttled...
...In recent times, however, men have so lost a sense of their direction that they have seemed oblivious to the danger facing them...
...There are hundreds of thousands of working immigrants who have been here many years as a positive part of the community...
...If I rob a bank and get hauled before a judge, it's no defense to say, 'You can't jail me because I won't see my kids.' Breaking the law has consequences...
...Thus will it be...
...She got a job in a frozen vegetable packing plant, where she met the man who soon became her husband, a naturalized citizen originally from Mexico...
...Some municipalities, including San Francisco and Chicago, have formally declared themselves "sanctuary cities," where police are barred from asking about the immigration status of most people with whom they come in contact...
...We just don't know what's going to happen...
...We have an order for your deportation...
...It's an unhappy irony for undocumented immigrants that trying to legalize their status can itself trigger their deportation...
...Men will seek to emulate Maitreya and his group of Masters, and so purify their structures and standards...
...To do that, immigrants must establish that they have lived for ten continuous years in the United States, have "good moral character," no criminal record, and that their deportation would cause "exceptional or extremely unusual hardship" to a close family member who is a citizen or permanent resident...
...By Vince Beiser Illustration by Stephanie Dalton Cowan Separated by Law How the Immigration Service Is Breaking Up Families The pounding of a fist on her front door jolted Evangelina Escamilla awake...
...They didn't even let him put on his shoes," says Escamilla...
...Her four-month-old baby, Pablito, stays with her while her husband takes care of the other two kids...
...When they finally saw him again, it was through the reinforced glass of the visiting room of a federal detention facility...
...Desperate, Liliana has taken refuge in an Episcopalian church in Long Beach, hoping that ICE won't risk the bad press of dragging a woman out of a house of worship...
...This realization will come when men turn inwards again, and find within their hearts the brotherhood and unity which all instinctively crave...
...Escamilla ducked back into the bedroom to call Romero's parents...
...Vince Beiser is a freelance journalist specializing in criminal justice and other social issues...
...There's nothing about the crime of illegal entry that should make it forgivable just because someone has a job or owns a house," says Bob Dane, a spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based group...
...And at the end of the day, I'll do my job...
...They can either represent themselves in the byzantine and highly technical proceedings—something about two-thirds of all such immigrants do...
...history: a multistate action against pallet-making company IFCO Systems North America in which 1,187 workers were arrested, and another targeting meatpackers Swift & Co...
...The wonders which will grace this coming edifice will delight and astonish all men...
...The first week was the hardest...
...But as her paperwork wound its way through the bureaucracy, immigration officials discovered that Liliana had been arrested back in 1998 for trying to enter the United States with a fake birth certificate...
...The church is one of dozens of interdenominational houses of worship across the country that have signed on to what is being called the New Sanctuary Movement...
...But conservatives pilloried that measure as "amnesty...
...They're members of the PTA, they coach Little League, they go to church," says Peter Schey, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which provides free legal help to immigrants...
...Sit down...
...Escamilla and the children are all U.S...
...They held off getting married, though, because Romero's lawyer told him that would complicate the application for a green card he had already filed with his mother's help...
...Luis Romero...
...After being held for a few months in Southern California where she and the children could at least visit him, he was recently moved to a federal lockup in Arizona...
...Just me and Pablito, alone," says Lil-iana, her eyes reddening...
...1 "% omero had the bad luck to get caught in an intensifying crackdown on illegal immigrants that is tearing families apart from coast to coast...
...For the next three days, she and the children had no idea where Romero was...
...More than three million of these are in the United States illegally, according to the Pew Hispanic Center...
...born-and-bred citizens...
...Unlike in criminal courts, defendants in immigration proceedings are not provided with government-funded lawyers...
...ICE refused a request for an interview with Romero...
...They have indeed diced with death, putting an inconceivable strain on those who are pledged to help them...
...But they're up against a tough national mood...
...Go see who it is," she whispered to her boyfriend, Luis Romero...
...Though he's had no trouble with the law ever since, that years-ago transgression may cost the family their father...
...Maitreya will stint nothing of his help and advice, nor shall we, your elder brothers, in our efforts to inspire the building of the new civilization...
...stays mostly out of sight, making occasional forays from the single bedroom...
...families with children—a group comprising nearly ten million individuals—includes at least one parent that isn't a citizen...
...She recently found a telemarketing job, so she's leaving the kids with grandparents during the day...
...You need to gather evidence about the health and psychological impacts on the kids, declarations from experts, conditions in the third country," says Schey...
...But at the end of the day, these are laws I have sworn to uphold...
...Romero has lost thirty pounds since he's been locked up, says Escamilla...
...That leaves most with an ugly choice...
...The owner of an Ohio-based sewing machine repair company, for instance, was sentenced this year to six months in jail and lost his home after being convicted of deliberately recruiting illegal immigrant workers...
...Since January, many labor, religious, and civil rights groups have called on the Bush Administration to impose a moratorium on any further worksite raids and related deportations...
...Bad advice...
...Millions more are at risk...
...ICE's crackdown comes on several fronts...
...And most of the price is paid by their U.S...
...She left them a quick, frantic message, but by the time she came back out, the officers were gone, and so was Romero...
...Deportation is rarely automatic...
...His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Harper's, Mother Jones, and many other publications...
...The light dawns Great are the possibilities which await men's creative efforts, however, and great will be their achievements when the light dawns and the blinkers drop from their eyes...
...That this danger and trial are largely of their own making is no doubt responsible for their equanimity and apparent indifference...
...Last year, fewer than 4,000 undocumented immigrants had their deportations suspended or cancelled—less than 2 percent of the number deported...
...Earlier this year, there was hope for these families as the Senate debated a massive immigration bill that would have allowed law-abiding, long-term immigrants like Romero to apply for citizenship after paying fines and other penalties...
...By the time their second child arrived a few years later, Liliana had filed her green card application, with her husband's support...
...They moved in together the next year, and she was pregnant soon after...
...Last year alone saw the two biggest worksite raids in U.S...
...With an election next year, no one in Washington is likely to push legislation...
...Earlier this year in Massachusetts, the arrest of hundreds of mostly Guatemalan workers at a leather goods factory left about 100 children stranded at schools and day-cares, parentless...
...Each will have a part to play in its construction and all will give of their best in its achievement...
...A labor-contracting firm in the same state had to forfeit $12 million and see its president sent to prison for fifteen months because of his involvement in supplying hundreds of undocumented employees to local businesses...
...Many of those ICE arrests wind up in the machinery of the immigration courts...
...Since ICE's inception, worksite arrests have mushroomed from 485 in 2002—the last full year of the old INS's authority—to 3,667 in 2006...
...that netted 1,297 illegal workers...
...Almost every one of those raids inflicts collateral damage...
...When men know this, they will be astonished to learn how close to annihilation have their actions brought them...
...Most of those people were never convicted of any offense other than having entered the country illegally...
...His application was denied, and the order for his deportation issued...
...The nonprofit Urban Institute estimates that nearly one in ten U.S...
...Since then, deportations have nearly doubled from 108,249 in 2000 to 192,838 last year...
...No one's denying the human cost of these banishments— not even Jennifer Silliman, the assistant special agent in charge of ICE's Los Angeles bureau...
...She glanced at the alarm clock: 5:30 in the morning...
...Escamilla is a petite twenty-three-year-old, her brown eyes framed in oval wire glasses and her glossy black hair pulled back in a ponytail...
...But with the extra burden of Romero's legal bills, she's fallen behind on her car payments and has had to get help from her church to cover the rent...
...To deport people like that, who have complied with all our laws, other than the initial violation of coming here illegally—there's no parity between the violation and the penalty...
...She tells her story sitting in the living room of her modest apartment in a working-class neighborhood in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley...
...But the bar is set very high...
...Take Liliana, a slim twenty-nine-year-old with long blond-highlighted hair and Cleopatra eyes from Michoacan, Mexico, who does not want her last name printed...
...Pulling a pair of jeans over his boxers, Romero padded out of the bedroom...
...One is the workplace: Over the last few years, ICE has swept down on businesses all across the country, confiscating the assets of companies that employ indocumenta-dos and even slapping their executives with prison terms...
...Many desperate immigrants wind up spending everything they have on a lawyer who isn't up to the job...
...Romero came to California at age sixteen, slipping over the border with a coyote's help to rejoin his mother, who had come years earlier and was by then a legal U.S...
...citizen children...
...Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick declared the situation a "humanitarian crisis...
...ICE is nailing them with hefty asset forfeitures and criminal charges...
...This year, the agency is on track to top 5,000...
...Modeled on the work of American churches in the 1980s that sheltered Central American refugees threatened with being sent back to their war-torn homelands, the movement aims to support immigrants with families and clean records who have been ordered deported...
...Sometimes I just don't want to get out of bed...
...If you mess up and get someone deported, they're not going to sue you...
...Simplicity and honest effort will replace the present corruption which stains every aspect of men's lives today...
...I try not to show how upset I am in front of the kids," says Escamilla...
...It's extremely time consuming and expensive...
...Then will come the blossoming of new hope and inspiration, leading men to renew their upward climb, and to the creation of a better world...
...resident...
...Two men and a woman in police-type uniforms were standing there confronting Romero...
...With Maitreya and his group to guide them, men will grow to love the simplicity of the new structures, and in them find a deep satisfaction and coherence...
...But Romero came to this country from El Salvador illegally...
...They had a second child, and Romero was making enough money as a tile layer for Escamilla to be able to stay home with the babies...
...one of them barked at her...
...Seldom has there been a time when men faced such danger...
...They will feel at ease in a world shorn of competition and the tension which it brings...
...Her bright-eyed baby girl, Amy, squirms happily on her lap, but little Luis Jr...
...Working together in cooperation they will find a profound happiness and fulfilment in all that they do...
...As a mother and a wife, I have my personal views," says Silliman, a young blonde with a no-nonsense manner...
...In 1998, she snuck over the border and made her way to Oxnard, California, where her parents and most of her eleven siblings live...
...It's very lonely without my kids," she says, "but the reason I'm doing it is so I can stay in this country with them...
...If he's deported, she'll be left to raise their children alone, or follow him to an impoverished foreign country she's never set foot in...
...The state of Colorado and several cities have recently passed laws barring illegal aliens from receiving government services and even renting apartments...
...He slid out of bed, taking care not to wake their two-month-old baby lying between them or their two-year-old son in his crib in the corner...
...Or they can pony up thousands of dollars to hire a private lawyer...
...Escamilla, a Los Angeles native, met him at a church dance four years ago...
...Sometimes I can't sleep at night...
...those who don't leave voluntarily can try to win what's called a "cancellation of removal...
...Yes...
...a male voice said...
...Since the ICE agents came to enforce it, Escamilla has been struggling to keep her little household afloat...
...Men, of course, know little or nothing of this escape, and continue blithely on their path...
...The Turning of the Wheel — When men* realize how close to self-destruction they have come, they will shudder to think of the consequences of their actions...
...I don't know how long I can keep going like this," she says...
...That leaves couples like Evange-line Escamilla and Luis Romero on their own...
...Even in the worst adversity they have fought and tested themselves against fate...
...She's been there since May, living in a sparsely furnished former office the church staff has converted into a bedroom for her...
...That this path leads only to a desert wasteland they have yet to understand, so steeped are they in materialistic ambition...
...Everything was going fine...
...Instead of legalizing her, they ordered her deported...
...At that, Escamilla bolted out of bed and into the living room in her pajamas...
...On top of ICE, I end up battling a lot of bad attorneys who take advantage of very vulnerable people," says Rosy Cho, a San Francisco immigration lawyer...
...Her husband works days driving a forklift in a warehouse and nights delivering pizza, so she gets visits from her family only on weekends...
...The old INS was dismantled after the September 11 attacks, and its internal policing duties handed to a new, more aggressive outfit: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE...
Vol. 71 • September 2007 • No. 9
